The +Tech Innovation Jam is a unique opportunity for students to mimic a real-world tech team of product managers, designers, and developers to design, prototype and launch ideas and produce a pitch deck and working prototype. This year, the program recruited 30 teams of 4-7 students from all schools and colleges and 30 alumni and industry experts to serve as mentors for each team. Led by Business+Tech’s Program Manager, Emilee Studley, and two +Tech Scholars, Eliana Lozano and Abbey Almeda, 22 teams advanced to the Round 1 Pitches. After that five teams competed in the +Tech Innovation Jam Finale on Monday, November 14th for first-place ($7,000), second place ($5,000), and third-place ($3,000).
As I sat through the first couple pitches, I was moved by the breadth of ideas student teams came-up with. These ideas were creative, inspiring, and highly advanced for 6-weeks of work. I knew that the caliber of talent among my peers was high but seeing it first-hand as part of the Innovation Jam made me realize that it was on a whole new level. Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, presenting a new business idea to a potential investor or suggesting an improvement or a new innovative approach to a process, delivering your idea effectively is a critical selling point to help you achieve that objective. In this blog post, I’m sharing a few winning themes that I observed while listening to the final pitches.
Think Through Your Idea
The first step of the Jam is to work with your team and find a common interest, pain point, or problem to solve. The most successful teams had a targeted and actionable idea that they all were motivated to pursue. Additionally, the final five teams presented ideas that existed outside of their experience at college – having a much larger impact and market that could exist outside of the University.
As your team thinks about an idea, understand what motivates you to pursue that idea or resolve a specific problem and ask the five w’s of problem solving:
- Who is this solving the problem for? The pitching teams discussed their target market and demographic.
- What is the idea trying to solve? This question should describe the unmet need or gap between the current state and the future state.
- When would this idea be utilized or useful for? Describing the user interaction with the product helps users understand how the product will meet an unmet need.
- Where is this idea taking place? Thinking about how, when and where your users will use your product will help understand the user’s journey and paint a clear picture of where it will be best utilized.
- Why should people use it or buy it? A clear value proposition helps summarize why a user should buy your product or service.
Tell A Story
Well thought out ideas will be showcased through storytelling. Each of the teams introduced storytelling by describing the customer journeys or introducing the problem and motivation behind their product and solution. An example of this was the Purpose team, in which they shared that each had a common interest in travel and found saving up for a trip to be difficult, like needing a tool to help plan for a spring break trip. Their solution was to gamify and make accountable a solution for helping you “save a little today for a bigger adventure tomorrow”, as described by their slogan. Another way to tell a story is through a demo of the product, the Energy App team gave the audience an interactive experience of how to use the product while walking the audience through the user journey how it is meeting an unmet need. They took the audience on a journey as a homeowner and explored how the app can improve the home energy improvement process through the building and energy audit model. Ultimately, an authentic story and visual representation will set you apart from the competition and set the tone to reach a deeper connection with the audience.
Diversify Your Team
The +Tech Innovation Jam teams consisted of three to six team members per team, and part of the challenge is navigating randomly selected teams of students across schools, majors, interests, skillsets and background. The Innovation Jam garners students from undergrad and graduate programs across the UofM ecosystem, and while there are differences in skills, professional tenure and background, preferences, and interests, exploring how teams can leverage diversity in personal and professional backgrounds result in greater productivity and utilization of strengths. The top and winning teams were able to use their large team as a competitive advantage and carefully plan the pitch to incorporate all the team members and their strengths. The CORE (Connected Research) team, for example, consisted of six team members in undergraduate and graduate programs and effectively integrated each team member into their final pitch in a streamlined, easy-to-follow, and engaged process. They did this by aligning ownership roles based on academic focus areas and during the presentation, they created an interactive experience amongst each other and with the audience through the product demo and introducing new sections of the pitch. To create effective diverse teams, it’s imperative that teams discuss each team member’s strengths and weaknesses and work together to align on the common goal of selling a great pitch idea.
Know The Details
While it’s important to communicate the problem and solution, it’s also important to cover the specifics. The top pitches consisted of clear value propositions, marketed memorable taglines, demonstrated user research, conducted market size and product-market-fit, defined the strategy for monetizing the business idea, and discussed the human capital investment required. Conveying the opportunity and the details to support the idea helped the judges understand the facts, market entry opportunity, differentiation, and gain confidence. When identifying what details are needed in a pitch, it’s helpful to consider the other person’s perspective and what their primary concerns might be.
In the Q&A portion of each of the pitches, the judges sought to determine the potential opportunities by asking questions like:
- How do you plan to secure data?
- Who is your nearest competitor and why aren’t they doing this? What do you think your competitors will do with this idea?
- How does your business model validate data and assumptions?
- What is your plan to reach the market?
- Where do you expect to get users or participants? How do you plan to attract and retain users?
- How will you approach partnerships?
- How do you validate your business model with data and assumptions?
Thinking about these questions will help fit the perspective, needs and interest of the judges and the audience, making it a more effective pitch.
Show the Long-term Roadmap
Judges, investors, colleagues, and senior leaders want to know what the future will look like if they invest in your idea and what the Return of Investment might offer. The panel of judges asked each of the teams what’d they’d do with the money if they won the jam today. From their perspective they were looking to see the long-term product roadmap and further understand where their monetary investment would go. The top pitches discussed investment in UX testing, conducting product market fit, designing another iteration of the MVP, building additional functionality, planning for reaching the market, developing partnerships, and exploring B2B and B2C licensing plans. As a key and final takeaway, the more compelling your short and long-term roadmap and vision, the more buy-in your pitch will have.
Curious about who the winners are? Check them out below.
Ross School of Business, Business + Tech Innovation Jam Finale in Robertson Auditorium, Monday, November 14, 2022.
The winners of the 2022 Innovation Jam is CORE!
CORE is a no code, customizable, and easy to deploy research kit.
Meet the founders:
- Akbar Arsiwala (MBA)
- Alyssa Ciapala (MBA)
- Ethan Marshall (CSE, Sophomore)
- Karthik Ramani (MBA)
- Rithvik Vanga (CSE, Sophomore)
- Riya Dev (CSE, First-year)